Several reasons:
- When you apply for a Trademark you have to specify the field, ie Design, Construction etc. So you can have multiple names, but in different fields.
- AFAIK, Trademarks are not international.
- And like you say, they may not have trademarked their name, or they do not wish to do anything about it.

Ben The Bin:
http://www.reestore....0&button=Submit
I bought some of these a few years back after watching a designer pitch them on Dragon's Den. It's by far the best bin I've had, for several reasons:
- It's an open bin so I don't have to open/close a lid when throwing stuff away.
- It's small.
- It's easily cleaned.
- It uses shopping bags, so they're being recycled. I may use more bags than I'd use with a standard bin liner bin, but I'm sure the material quantity is a lot less.
- The bin contains less, so I make regular trips to our local bins. This means that I haven't got lots of rubbish inside or outside my house.
I initially thought that having an open bin like this would be unhygienic. I also thought it would be a problem with my dog. There were no problems and it feels a lot more hygienic than having a large closed bin.
I'm not sure how well the product is selling, as I've seen them disappearing from stores, but I'd definitely recommend buying one and giving it a try.

Hi Shift, thanks.
AFAIK Max 2010 had Connection Extension that allowed CAD data to be cleanly imported using .SAT file, but Alias doesn't export this. Max 2010 doesn't import a WIRE file. I'm not sure if 2011 does. Max doesn't import STEP files natively, it requires a plug-in. I'll try out DXF.
It would be really good to hear from people who frequently use Max to bring in Alias models for rendering or animation.
Regarding my question #2, I've had problems bringing a Nurbs object into Max and converting to polys for UV unwrapping, as it's resulted in a triangulated mesh, making unwrapping very difficult.

I bought my desktop several years back, purely for work, but sold as a gaming machine. When I compared specs of workstations from companies such as Dell, there was nothing worth paying the premium over for me. It would have been cheaper to swap things out if needed. I've a quad core overclocked to 3.2, with good ram (expandable to 8GB) and a gaming card, which has been perfect for me running the software mentioned, and will still be used for a good few years to come. By that time laptops will have a lot more power in them so a work-capable laptop will be cheaper - I'll go that route with an extra monitor.
Money's not an issue to some but it was for me. Funny that, if ever I'm at a festival and the heavens open, those ponchos triple in price.

I've had no problem with my GPU. I did a lot of research on it a while back. If you're a company, then most wouldn't mind paying the extra for any support and the reassurance of compatibility. But for a student, hobbyist etc (not sure what the OP is), the need for paying a premium for a CAD card for the software he stated, is unnecessary. Just research forums and user experience to find out which are compatible.

Personally I wouldn't worry about CAD cards. I run Max, SW and PS fine on a GeForce card, so do many others. There are tonnes of threads on using gaming cards for CAD - it's more dependent on the driver. Make sure you've got good RAM or the ability to expand and 64-bit if you have heavy scenes. You pay a high premium for a workstation because the customer would pay more than a gamer would.

Last night I was looking at a thread here, or possibly on Core77, which showed an interior render of a car on the first post. It also had a link to a recent Transport Design graduate's portfolio (Coroflot I think) with some impressive Alias work. I've just spent the last hour searching for it but can't find it. Can anyone point me to it? Thanks.

You need to break it down into smaller sections.
- Start off by learning basic two point perspective, drawing fundamental shapes such as boxes, cylinders, spheres etc. I don't know of any books but there are plenty of online resources ie here, www.idsketching.com, or youtube (eg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ8UBN12rDI...eature=related).
- You also need to practice your technique, ie how to draw a clean line (plenty of threads around here) and how to draw ellipses using major, minor axis.
- You then need to look into line weight and how it is used in product design sketching to emphasis certain edges.
- You need to look into how to simplify a shape down and remove unnecessary details whilst providing enough visual information of a product.
- Then you need to look into light and shading. Do this using the fundamental shapes in step one.
- If you are looking to render in marker then you need to learn marker technique. idsketching.com is a good place for this.
- Further on you can go into using colour correctly, product context, composition and drawing the viewer's eye.
- Look at artists' work that you like and take inspiration and influence from it.
This is a basis and I reckon you should focus on this with basic shapes as, once learnt, you take the same principles and easily apply them to more complex geometry.